The Help - Kathryn Stockett

It was hard for me to set this book down on my nightstand each night, and if I’m being completely honest, I was up until midnight last night finishing it because I lacked the will-power to leave the story for the next day. Less than 12 hours since I finished the novel, I have already passed it along to someone else.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a novel of stories written from three different points-of-view. Although this is her first book (it seems I’ve been picking up a lot of first-time authors lately…) I can already tell she is a character writer. There is something magical about a character writer; the way they can bring a character to life and give them voice is just so amazing to me. They lure me, hook, line and sinker, every time.

She writes from the perspective of two black maids waiting on white families in Mississippi in the early 1960s. A historical-fiction piece, Stockett weaves the beginnings of the Vietnam War, Kennedy’s assassination and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech in the plot of her stories giving reference for readers and a sense of reality to her fiction.

She also writes from the perspective of a young white woman rebelling against the societal norms she has grown up around. Skeeter, a nickname given to her as a child, longs to become a writer, but when she is told that she must come up with a controversial topic to write about, she decides to team-up with Aibileen and Minny, the two black maids, to create a collection of anecdotes describing what it is like to work for white women in the South. Though it took tragedy to convince them, other maids step forward to share their stories with Skeeter, as well, increasing the chances for the book’s success. Some of the testimonies are depressing, brutal, while others are fun and show a true bond between the maids and their white women. The plot continues in a predictable fashion, but I think the true beauty of this novel is that all three women come to the realization of who they are, not who they have been told they should be. They embrace freedom, realizing that all along they had been living in self-bondage. They are strong.

This book is being used as an ancillary to To Kill a Mockingbird for Honors Sophomore English at the high school I used to work for. Given the topic, mature themes are inevitable, but I don’t see how an Honors English Sophomore student could be derailed by the content. The novel is fabulous and, I think, perfectly complements To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is honest, heart-felt and just a great read. I would, and have, highly recommend it to anyone looking for a relaxing summer read.

-Harper